


Life in Black and White

by spensierata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pregnancy Cravings, Season 8 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 02:07:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12546428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spensierata/pseuds/spensierata
Summary: Mulder is dead, Scully develops a craving.





	Life in Black and White

He had taught her how to eat them.

 

His therapist had turned him onto them as a child, to stop him biting his nails. So he was the one to blame.

 

“Did it work?” she had asked, and he presented his hand proudly, holding them up to the flickering fluorescent light. It was still flickering. It was time to get that fixed.

 

Doggett got it fixed and didn’t understand why she’d started weeping.

_Hormones it’s just hormones._

 

_Stop eyeing the seeds Skinner, don’t mention them. I know you know. Don’t say it._

 

She held the evidence of their affair in the palm of her hand. It grew ever more prominently under her blouse. _Affair_. She hated that word. It felt dirty, it felt wrong. Daniel had been an affair; Mulder had been salvation.

 

She heard it muttered in hushed voices in the break room when her colleagues thought she was out of earshot, along with words like _love child_ , which she hated even more. They nudged each other and exchanged dollar bills, gave her wax smiles. Before he had turned up dead, the pitying glances she received told her the most popular story was Mulder found out about the baby and ran. If only.

 

If only it had been an affair, and not ice tea in a bag. If only the rumours had merit, if only they had gotten it on from day one and not wasted their precious little time. If only they would have fallen into bed for the pure convenience of it, rather than a harrowing necessity. If only he were a coward, a deadbeat who definitely would not have been overjoyed for her, for them. Who would not have committed her maternity books to memory and touched her growing belly with pride and tenderness and teased her mercilessly about these stupid _fucking_ sunflower seeds she salted with her tears.

 

_Don’t look at me like that, Frohike. Langley, I said I’m fine. I know you’re worried, Byers, but please leave me alone._

 

She tore apart the black and white with blood red nails she had painted for her niece’s christening. Melissa Margaret: two names she could cross off a short list.

 

She hadn’t told anyone besides her mother, so she had prepared herself for the hard stare her brother levelled at her fitted pencil dress which held no secrets. She placed a protective hand on the curve of her stomach as he approached, but her brother surprised her with an enveloping embrace. “I’m sorry Danes,” he whispered into her hair, “I know you- I know he made you happy,”

 

It caught her off guard, she knew had Mulder actually been standing there he would have been punched in the face. The thought, sadistically, almost made her laugh.

 

The truth was she could not escape him, even if she had wanted to, not even for a second. He was everywhere she looked, he left traces of himself like pieces of a puzzle she would never be able to complete. He was in their office, in the pencils lodged in the ceiling and the notes scrawled in his frantic handwriting she had tucked away in the desk.

 

And those seeds, they were everywhere. On the floor of the Ford Taurus, under the couch where they conceived, in pillowcases, in boxes, in drawers, in the fridge. Who keeps seeds in the _fridge?_ When he was alive she’d hated it, now he was dead, she hated it even more.

 

He had seeped under her skin, given her life, given her _a_ _life_ , squirming and kicking, as restless as it’s father. Growing every day inside of her, Mulder’s final gift, his final curse, that she would never be able to forget him.

 

She satisfied their child’s unrelenting hunger, seed after seed and wondered if her son would have dark puppy dog eyes, the colour of the sea. Pack after pack, and wondered if her daughter would have full soft lips concealing a silver tongue.

 

She tries not to think of all the flowers that could have been.

 

On the road towards perdition, he offered her a handful. She’d accepted. _Stupid_. She should have known then. _Stupid_. If she’d known, if he’d known, maybe he wouldn’t be gone. Maybe his child was meant to save him.

 

“You know they’re technically not even seeds, when you take it out of the shell,” he mused, “the part you eat, its called the heart,” his lips twitched into a know it all smirk. “you have to get past the hard shell to get to it, it makes you work, I guess that explains why I love you too,”

 

She held his challenging gaze and tried not to glance at his tongue as he pushed it past his parted lips, discarding the broken shell.

 

“Mulder,”

 

“Yes, Scully?”

 

For a half a moment she had considered telling him that he had already consumed what was left of her heart, instead, she said “You’re full of shit,”

 

From the way he grinned you would have thought she’d promised him the moon and stars. Three Dog Night came on the radio; she’d turned it up loud.

 


End file.
